Paul R. Spickard earned his PhD from the University of California Berkeley, and
is currently Director of Research at the Institute for Polynesian Studies near
Honolulu. He is the author of numerous books, including Mixed Marriage (1982)
and Mixed Blood (1989).

In most people's minds ... race is a fundamental organizing principle of human
affairs. Everyone has a race, and only one. The races are biologically and
characterologically separate one from another, and they are at least
potentially in conflict with one another. Race has something to do with blood
(today we might say genes), and something to do with skin color, and something
to do with the geographical origins of one's ancestors. According to this way
of thinking, people with more than one racial ancestry have a problem, one that
can be resolved only by choosing a single racial identity.

It is my contention in this essay, however, that race, while it has some
relationship to biology, is not mainly a biological matter. Race is primarily a
sociopolitical construct. The sorting of people into this race or that in the
modern era has generally been done by powerful groups for the purposes of
maintaining and extending their own power. Not only is race something different
from what many people have believed it to be, but people of mixed race are not
what many people have assumed them to be. . .

Most systems of categorization divided humankind up into at least red, yellow,
black, and white: Native Americans, Asians, Africans, and Europeans. Whether
Australian aborigines, Bushmen, and various brown-skinned peoples--Polynesians
and Malays, for example--constituted separate races depended on who was doing
the categorizing.

There has been considerable argument, in the nineteenth century and since, over
the nature of these "races." The most common view has been to see races as
distinct types. That is, there were supposed to have been at some time
in the past four or five utterly distinct and pure races, with physical
features, gene pools, and character qualities that diverged entireIy one from
another. Over millennia there had been some mixing at the margins, but the
observer could still distinguish a Caucasian type (light of skin, blue-eyed,
possessing fine sandy , hair, a high-bridged nose, thin lips, and so on), a
Negroid type (dark brown of skin, brown-eyed, with tightly curled black hair, a
broad flat nose, thick lips, and so on), an Asian type, and so on. There was
debate as to whether these varieties of human beings all proceeded from the
same first humans or there was a separate genesis for each race. The latter
view tended to regard the races as virtual separate species, as far apart as
house cats and cougars; the former saw them as more like breeds of
dogs--spaniels, collies, and so forth. The typological view of races developed
by Europeans arranged the peoples of the world hierarchically, with Caucasians
at the top, Asians next, then Native Americans, and Africans at the bottom--in
terms of both physical abilities and moral qualities.

...The most important thing about races was the boundaries between them. If
races were pure (or had once been), and if one were a member of the race at the
top, then it was essential to maintain the boundaries that defined one's
superiority, to keep people from the lower categories from slipping
surreptitiously upward. Hence U.S. law took pains to define just who was in
which racial category. Most of the boundary drawing came on the border between
White and Black. The boundaries were drawn on the basis not of
biology--genotype and phenotype--but of descent. For purposes of the laws of
nine southern and border states in the early part of this century, a "Negro"
was defined as someone with a single Negro great-grandparent; in three other
southern states, a Negro great-great-grandparent would suffice. That is, a
person with 15 White ancestors four generations back and a single Negro
ancestor at the same remove was reckoned a Negro in the eyes of the law
(Spickard, 1989, pp. 374-375; Stephenson, 1910, pp. 12-20).

But what was a "Negro"? It turned out that, for the purposes of the court, a
Negro ancestor was simply any person who was socially regarded as a Negro. That
person might have been the descendant of several Caucasians along with only a
single African. Thus far less than one-sixteenth actual African ancestry was
required in order for an individual to be regarded as an African American. In
practice--both legal and customary--anyone with any known African ancestry was
deemed an African American, while only those without any trace of known African
ancestry were called Whites. This was known as the "one-drop rule": One drop of
Black blood made one an African American. In fact, of course, it was not about
blood--or biology--at all. People with no discernible African genotype or
phenotype were regarded as Black on the basis of the fact that they had
grandfathers or other remote relatives who were socially regarded as Black, and
they had no choice in the matter.... The boundaries were drawn in this manner
to maintain an absolute wall surrounding White dominance....

Race, then, is primarily a social construct. It has been constructed in
different ways in different times and places. In 1870, the U.S. Bureau of the
Census divided up the American population into races: White, Colored (Blacks),
Colored (Mulattoes), Chinese, and Indian (U.S. Department of Interior, 1872,
pp. 606-609). In 1950, the census categories reflected a different social
understanding: White, Black, and Other. By 1980, the census categories
reflected the ethnic blossoming of the previous two decades: White, Black,
Hispanic, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, American Indian,
Asian Indian, Hawaiian, Guamanian, Samoan, Eskimo, Aleut, and Other. In England
in 1981, the categories were quite different: White, West Indian, African,
Arab, Turkish, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and
Other--because the sociopolitical landscape in England demanded different
divisions (Banton, 1983, pp. 56-57). (The fact that some of these are also
nationality labels should not obscure the fact that many in the United States
and Great Britain treat them as domestic racial units.) In South Africa, there
are four racial categories: White, African, Coloured, and Asian (Fredrickson,
1981). In Brazil, the gradations between Black and White are many: preto,
cabra, escuro, mulato escuro, mulato claro, pardo, sarará moreno,
and branco de terra (Dealer, 1971, p. 103). Each of these systems of
racial classification reflects a different social, economic, and political
reality. Such social situations change, and so do racial categories.

...From the point of view of the dominant group, racial distinctions are a
necessary tool of dominance. They serve to separate the subordinate people as
Other. Putting simple, neat racial labels on dominated peoples--and creating
negative myths about the moral qualities of those peoples--makes it easier for
the dominators to ignore the individual humanity of their victims. It eases the
guilt of oppression. Calling various African peoples all one racial group, and
associating that group with evil, sin, laziness, bestiality, sexuality, and
irresponsibility, made it easier for White slave owners to rationalize holding
their fellow humans in bondage, whipping them, selling them, separating their
families, and working them to death (Fredrickson, 1971;W. D. Jordan, 1969). The
function of the one-drop rule was to solidify the barrier between Black and
White, to make sure that no one who might possibly be identified as Black also
became identified as White. For a mixed person, then, acceptance of the
one-drop rule means internalizing the oppression of the dominant group, buying
into the system of racial domination.

Race is by no means only negative, however. From the point of view of
subordinate peoples, race can be a positive tool, a source of belonging, mutual
help, and self-esteem. Racial categories (and ethnic categories, for they
function in the same way) identify a set of people with whom to share a sense
of identity and common experience. To be a Chinese American is to share with
other Chinese Americans at least the possibility of free communication and a
degree of trust that may not be shared with non-Chinese. It is to share access
to common institutions--Chinese churches, Chinatowns, and Chinese civic
associations. It is to share a sense of common history--immigration, work on
the railroads and in the mines of the West, discrimination, exclusion, and a
decades-long fight for respectability and equal rights. It is to share a sense
of peoplehood that helps locate individuals psychologically, and also provides
the basis for common political action. Race, this socially constructed
identity, can be a powerful tool, either for oppression or for group
self-actualization.

...What is a person of mixed race? Biologically speaking, we are all mixed.
That is, we all have genetic material from a variety of populations, and we all
exhibit physical characteristics that testify to mixed ancestry. Biologically
speaking, there never have been any pure races - all populations are mixed.

More to the point is the question of to which socially defined category people
of mixed ancestry belong. The most illogical part of all this racial
categorizing is not that we imagine it is about biology. After all, there
is a biological component to race, or at least we identify biological
referents--physical markers--as a kind of shorthand to stand for what are
essentially socially defined groups. What is most illogical is that we imagine
these racial categories to be exclusive. The U.S. Census form says, "Check one
box." If a person checks "Other," his or her identity and connection with any
particular group is immediately erased. Yet what is a multiracial person to
do?

...The salient point here is that once, before the last third of the
twentieth century, multiracial individuals did not generally have the
opportunity to choose identities for themselves. In the 1970s and particularly
the 1980s, however, individuals began to assert their right to choose their own
identities--to claim belonging to more than one group, or to create new
identities.... By 1990, Mary Waters could write, "One of the most basic choices
we have is whether to apply an ethnic label to ourselves" (p. 52). She was
speaking of a choice of ethnic identities from among several White options,
such as Italian, Irish, and Polish. Yet the concept of choice began to apply to
mixed people of color as well.

...That choice is still available to mixed people, but it is no longer
necessary. Today a person of mixed ancestry can choose to embrace all the
parts of his or her background.